


Lover I Don't Have to Love

by MajorAccent



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Binary Commentary, F/M, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 04:38:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorAccent/pseuds/MajorAccent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a prompt over at tsn_kinkmeme, “How many hearts would be invaded for the wrong reasons, if each time you said "I love you", you meant it? / Five times Mark said "I love you," and didn't mean it, and the one time he did.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lover I Don't Have to Love

**Author's Note:**

> According to LJ, I wrote this two years ago.

 

**i. Mom and Dad**  
  
01001001 00100000 01100001 01110000 01110000 01110010 01100101 01100011 01101001 01100001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110010 01100001 01101001 01110011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101101 01100101 00101100 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01110000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01100111 01101111 00100000 01100001 01110111 01100001 01111001 00101110  
  
They force him to say  _it_  when they dropped him off on the first day of his freshman year. He’s carrying boxes of his uprooted life alongside his dad, hating everything with an intense passion. College is forcing him to live with strangers he’s only vaguely familiar with by the names on the sheet he received a month back.  
  
He looks around the common area of the dorm, seeing a tan couch and coffee table but not much else. His dad sets a box full of clothes down right on the stoop, wiping his brow of sweat and complains to a deaf set of ears about the AC needing to be turned on.  
  
Mark inspects the wall for electrical plugs, claiming the bare mattress next to the wall with the most by setting his box of clothes on top of it.  
  
When he’s done bringing things up his mom is getting teary-eyed and singing his praises as his dad claps him hard on the back, reminding him of what an opportunity he has.  
  
He says it nearly every time he's on the phone with them. They keep saying, _“We’re so proud of you,"_  or,  _"you're going to be so successful."_  
  
He neglects to mention the years of his adolescence when they kept asking, _“why don't you ever have friends over?"_  or,  _"Can't you just get off the computer?"_  
  
Saying, "I love you, too," seems like the prerequisite for them to leave him alone.   
  
 **ii. The Starbucks Barista**  
  
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Mark is standing with his eyes almost entirely closed as he's in line at the campus Starbucks. He has been awake for nearly forty hours and his caffeine intake is reaching dangerous lows.  
  
Her smile is wide and bright, rubbing the fact that she had the recommended eight hours of sleep in his face.  
  
"What can I get for you?" She asks in her perky voice that is only irritating because his body hates itself too much.  
  
"Venti, house brew. Five shots of espresso." He mumbles, pulling a crumpled ten dollar bill from his pocket and handing it to her.  
  
"Coming right up."  
  
Mark is just sleep deprived to murmur an  _"I love you,"_  instead of  _"thanks."_ She snorts in amusement as she hands him the heated cup.  
  
 **iii. Erica**  
  
01011001 01101111 01110101 00100111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100010 01101001 01110100 01100011 01101000 00101110  
  
Mark doesn't even  _remember_  what started their fight. She's yelling at him. Her eyes are moving quickly, most likely looking around at the people she knows, the people she'll have to explain this to later.  
  
He bites his lip, holding back scathing remarks he could make about her outfit. He did remember, however, Eduardo's advice about not making the situation worse.  
  
 _“Stay on topic, Mark. Don’t bring up anything that isn’t relevant to the argument.”_  
  
"We're just friends, Mark! You have no reason to be jealous!"  
  
His attention is brought back from Eduardo by Erica’s voice breaking from overuse. His brow crease together, lips pressing into a line as he says, "I just love you."  
  
She stops. Staring at him, a small smile breaks across her face, all her complaints ceasing existence in her head as she wraps a hand around his the back of his neck and leans in to ask, "Really?"  
  
His hands hold her waist as he replies, "Of course." His lips brush against her’s, ending their fight.  
  
 **iv & v. Dustin and Chris **  
  
01001101 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110011 01101000 01100001 01110010 01100101 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101111 01110111 01101110 00101110  
  
Mark just happens to be upside down at this point in his life. In a literal sense, because a few guys that row crew just think it's  _hilarious_  to throw nerds into campus dumpsters.  
  
He groans in pain, his scrawny arms trying to push against the unstable debris to right himself. His hand touches something wet and a grimace dances across his face in response.  
  
"Mark?" A voice asks, a hand wrapping around the ankle of his exposed legs.  
  
His brow quirks in a silent question before he realizes the person can't see his face, "how did you know?"  
  
A new pair of hands reaches into the dumpster, grabbing at his torso to lift him out. The position offers no leverage that couldn’t potentially hurt him, so he’s left with feebly scrapping the heels of his palms against the wall of his prison to level himself.  
  
He sees the slightly amused faces of Chris and Dustin as his eyes adjusted.  
  
"How did—"  
  
"Don't," Mark says quickly, rubbing his hand on his shorts before picking up his forgotten backpack. "How did you know it was me?"  
  
Dustin scoffed, "You're the only person who's still wearing the shorts and socks combo in November."  
  
Mark raises an eyebrow, “what would you have done if it wasn’t me?”  
  
“Saved a nerd,” Dustin says with a grin. “It’d be our act of philanthropy. Andrew Carnegie would be so proud of us.”  
  
Chris rolled his eyes in response as they walked back to Kirkland, "C'mon, we all deserve to get drunk."  
  
Mark sighed, "I love you guys so much right now."  
  
 **\+ i. Eduardo**  
  
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Mark is back to gnawing on his lip. He's watching his best friend move around the tiny kitchenette of his dorm to grab plates and utensils.  
  
A plate of stir-fried pork is set in front of him as Eduardo sits down across from him with his own plate of beef chow mien.  
  
Mark doesn't even bother to break his chopsticks apart and go about the ritual of rubbing them together to peel off the splinters that manage to stick out. He pushes the rice and vegetables around his plate to avoid eating.  
  
Eduardo's face contorts to a look of concern before he asks, "What's on your mind?"  
  
Mark shakes his head, still staring at the mound of Chinese food before him, "nothing."  
  
Eduardo scoffs around the rice in his mouth, "“Nothing,” my ass. Come on, since when have we had secrets?"  
  
"You're forgetting the Winklevii cease and desist letter," Mark points out, rising and heading to the fridge. "You want a beer?"  
  
Eduardo nods, taking another bite of his noodles, "Yeah, and don't change the subject. Are you thinking about getting back together with Erica?"  
  
Mark sighed, closing his eyes as he opened the fridge, asking himself: "Why are we on this topic?"  
  
"Come on, talk to Wardo," he said, chuckling a little, taking the beer Mark had offered on his way back to his seat.  
  
Mark decides sticks to military protocol. Deny everything, admit nothing.  
  
"What do you want me to say? There isn't anyone."  
  
"Your body language says otherwise," Eduardo observes, and Mark curses the psychology class he didn't take his junior year of high school. "Who is she?" Eduardo prodded again.  
  
"None of your business," Mark snaps back.  
  
"Do you love her?"  
  
Mark's eyes bore into his plate, glancing up to Eduardo, "Yeah."   
  
And yeah, Mark  _did_  love him.  
  
"And she doesn't love you?" Eduardo asks, sighing. "I know how that's like."  
  
"Rachel just wants to be friends?" Mark asks about the girl in Eduardo's Econ class, hoping to change the focus to his best friend.  
  
"No," Eduardo says shaking his head, "she says her parents would never approve, so she's not even giving me a chance."  
  
Mark considered quoting that success comes about from calculated risks, but he settles with, "that was cruel."  
  
"She just... Yeah. But back to you, is she taken?"  
  
"No," Mark replies carefully, shaking his head slightly. His hands bury themselves into his hoodie’s front pocket, nerves forcing him to twiddle the loose string within it. "Just doesn't feel the same way."  
  
"She told you that?" Eduardo asks, probing for more.  
  
Mark’s lips curl inward before he sighs, "doesn't even know I'm alive," like a melodramatic thirteen-year-old.  
  
Eduardo's mouth presses into a line, "You haven't told her?"  
  
Mark's eyes drop down to stare at the neck his beer bottle, "I can't... We're friends and if I say something it might..."  
  
"You have to take a chance, Mark.” Eduardo says, getting the look in his eye Mark had secretly named the  _“let-me-be-a-good-best-friend-and-help-you_ look." “You have to tell her, I mean, it's not my place to say, but you have to, or you'll never know. She may feel the same way, but is too shy to say. Tell her."  
  
Mark's mouth twists with frustration, contemplating telling him that the pronouns are completely wrong.   
  
"Wardo, I can't..."  
  
"Take the chance, Mark.” A hopeful look looms on Eduardo’s face, “Just go up to her and say..."  
  
"I love  _you_ ," Mark whispers.  
  
Eduardo nods, "Exactly." He stands, depositing his clean plate into the sink.  
  
If Eduardo notices him clutching the green beer bottle a little harder than he was earlier, he doesn’t mention it to Mark. Instead he asks, “Dustin got the new Call of Duty, didn’t he?”  
  
Mark nods, and decides to go code instead.  
  
Code is logical. It has a set pattern.  
  
And if he adds a little unnecessary binary, no one will call him out on it.  
  
01101001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101111 01110101 01100111 01101000 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01110011 01101111 01100110 01110100 01110111 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01100001 01110100 01101001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00101110

**Author's Note:**

> [This](http://www.foldedpinup.tumblr.com) is my tumblr if you feel like yelling at me.


End file.
